


A few steps further

by greyathena



Series: A journey of a thousand miles [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:56:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyathena/pseuds/greyathena
Summary: A few vignettes in continuation of A journey of a thousand miles.  Some aspects of Disney canon; no EU "Legends" canon; but no unhappy endings.  An AU hybrid fix-it, if you will.





	1. The problem.

Han said it was all his fault. Leia thought it was hers, because she was the one who should have - well.

If you went by Han's reckoning, it really traced back to Tatooine. Because he owed Jabba, he got sold to Jabba when captured by Vader, and taken to Tatooine, and Leia came there to rescue him. That didn't seem important at the time.

Well. It was _everything_ at the time, and later. That she would do that for him. That he woke up from a nightmare, shivering and sick and blind, and she was there. But - aside from her seeing where Luke grew up - the fact that this took place on Tatooine in particular didn't seem important. And they were back with the Alliance soon enough, and then on Endor, and then married and traveling the galaxy.

But then Leia began to cough, and that's how everything started. According to Han.

Leia began to cough, and after a day or two it was deep and hacking and never ending, and after three days she was bent in half, twisted with it, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, gasping for air in between. She couldn't sleep; she spent the night in a series of short dozes interspersed with coughing fits, sitting up bent over her own lap, seizing. Han, of course, didn't sleep either. He spent his nights anxiously rubbing her back, counting the days to their next planned stop at Kuat.

By the fourth day Leia said, her voice almost gone, "I think I need a med center when we land."

Leia asking to be taken to a med center was almost as scary as the sound of her deep, wrenching coughs in the night. They went immediately upon landing on Kuat, in a speeder cab whose driver threw nervous looks Leia's way as if he feared contagion.

It was officially an Alliance med center now; Kuat having been liberated early and a contingent sent to secure and fully staff a center that would be a convenient treatment location for Alliance personnel wounded in skirmishes around the Core. Leia gave her real name with only a second's hesitation, and in what must have been a show of respect or deference, she was seen by a human doctor rather than by droids.

The doctor still scanned her, of course, and stood frowning at the results as if they confused him. "You grew up on Alderaan," he said.

Leia just nodded; she was in the grip of a coughing fit. Only the top half of her red face showed over the hands tightly pressed to her mouth.

"Have you - have you spent time on a desert world at all? Recently?"

"She was on Tatooine," Han answered for her. "About two months ago, little more."

"Ah. In . . . a clean environment?"

"No," Han snorted. Whatever you'd call Jabba's, it certainly wasn't _clean_.

"There we have it, then," said the doctor.

"What?" Han asked, feeling his forehead crease in concern. "She got sand in there or something?"

Leia finished coughing and leaned back, spent, against the medical cot. Seamlessly the doctor handed her a cup of water. "Partthocillia," he said. "Extremely common on the desert worlds. It's - it's an odd little disease. Humans who live on those worlds are _so_ exposed to it, consistently from birth, that most of them never get sick from it. They have an immunity. On the other hand, parttho is so infectious that visitors to those planets are almost guaranteed to catch it."

"I've been to Tatooine a thousand times," Han said, patting Leia's hand. "Never got sick."

"You're young, and more robust than she is," the doctor said. "You might well have had a mild case, something you attributed to an ordinary cold. It does have a long incubation period, so you might have been somewhere else by the time you got sick. After one bout you probably wouldn't have gotten it again."

"No one mentions it, vaccines or anything," Han said.

"My brother," Leia rasped, one hand going to her throat. "He grew up on Tatooine. Never mentioned this . . ."

"Parttho," the doctor repeated. "Honestly there's a chance he's never heard of it. Like I said, it tends not to affect the native populations. Not on their radar."

The doctor did not, Han noticed, ask why Leia and her brother had grown up on different planets.

"So what do you do for it?" Han asked. 

"Antibiotics." The doctor sounded unconcerned enough that Han relaxed; although then he did add, "Considering the severity of Her Highness's case, and the fact that she's several days into symptoms, an IV infusion. A three- or four-day course, depending on how she responds."

"Three or four _days_?" Han repeated.

"She should also be on oxygen," the doctor said, addressing this more or less in Leia's direction. "And we'll administer breathing treatments to help with the cough, although that will improve dramatically after a few doses of the antibiotics."

And to think he'd thought she had a bad cold coming on. 

A Togruta nurse had already appeared from nowhere and was sliding an oxygen cannula under Leia's nose. "Han," Leia said softly.

"I'll go and put the orders in," the doctor said. "Back in a moment." And then he was gone, and the Togruta, too.

"Go and take the meeting," Leia said. Then she coughed again, her face twisting in pain.

"No way," Han said automatically. "Not leaving you here by yourself."

"I'm going to be asleep the whole time," she said. "I hope. They'll give me something to -" Cough. Cough. "Help with the cough, and I'm going to pass out."

Her hands were still mostly clutched to her mouth, so he petted her hip. "Still. They can get me a cot and I can stay with you."

She shook her head. "You don't need me. You're the one who knows the shipbuilders. Get it done and we can leave when I'm released."

That gave him a moment's pause - picturing Leia, just released from the hospital and exhausted, dragging herself to meetings in Kuat's shipyards. If he could get it all settled while she had her treatment, and he could just bring her straight back to the _Falcon_ to rest . . .

"They're Alliance personnel," Leia added. Her sandpapery voice broke on the last word. "I'm safe here."

"Do you really feel safe or are you just saying that?" He was aware that asking the question was halfway to relenting.

"It's safe."

He studied her face, but she was calm and confident as far as he could tell. And he liked to think he could tell when Leia was scared.

The Togruta came back then, wheeling a cart full of supplies. "Just going to get your IV placed, Your Highness," she said cheerfully. "The doctor's ordered something to help with your soreness and make you more comfortable, as well as the antibiotics. We'll get you some real rest soon."

"Sounds wonderful," Leia said, with a royal smile for the nurse.

On autopilot Han reached for Leia's nearest hand and pulled it away from her mouth, holding it tightly while the nurse prepped her other arm. "Look at me," he reminded her softly.

"All right?" the Togruta asked.

"I don't faint if I don't watch," Leia replied blithely. Or as blithely as she could manage with her voice wrecked. Her eyes tightened a tiny fraction when the needle went in, but otherwise she was fine.

"You really want me to go?" Han asked.

Leia's eyes drifted closed as she nodded. "Get it done." A small, weak cough. "Then we can go home."

He sent a quick glance at the Togruta. Whatever they had given her must be working quickly, if . . . Leia hadn't referred to anyplace as "home" in a long time.

"I'll wait till you're asleep," he said, leaning in to kiss her forehead. "All right? And I'll be back as soon as I can."

Leia shook her head slowly. "Sleep on the ship. More comfortable."

"Not without you," he whispered.

She smiled and fumbled, eyes still closed, for his hand. "You can visit. Then your own bed."

"You -"

"Nothing to prove," she murmured. "I promise."

The Togruta nurse had melted away. He leaned in again and kissed Leia's nose, feeling a bit of the cool stream from the oxygen cannula. "Rest for now," he said. "We can talk about it when I come back."

She nodded again. Her face was already relaxing in a way he hadn't seen in too long.

Reluctantly, but at the same time eager to get their business done with, he crept from the hospital room once he was sure she was asleep. The guilt was a constant quiet gnawing at the back of his mind, the knowledge that she wouldn't be sick if not for him. Wouldn't be hooked up to days worth of IVs, just when they thought all the remnants of that whole nightmare were behind them.

The physical ones, anyway. He'd never tell her how often Vader appeared in his nightmares. Leia, who was still coming to terms with her bloodline, didn't need that extra baggage.

She was, at least, right about the meetings at the shipyard. Except for the fact that the builders might have enjoyed the cachet of meeting with royalty, he didn't need her for the discussions about what they could get made for the New Republic, and how quickly. Han did have all the expertise in this area, and on top of that, the builders were anxious to negotiate. They were much better off on a liberated Kuat than being bled dry by the Empire, and more than willing to rush new fighters for the purpose of liberating the rest of their trading partners. Han barely had to do more than show up and hold out the contracts for signing. 

Though it was their nominal mission, none of this ended up being the important part. 

Han ended up spending most of his time on Kuat browsing the markets, idly looking for something that might interest Leia and occasionally coming up with a holo or a novel to entertain her while she rested on the _Falcon_ later. Or he'd sit in a cafe or a bar, alternating crisp Kuat lager with glasses of lukewarm water and eavesdropping on conversations. Most were pro-New Republic, if cautious about whether any government was much better than any other. But they were pleased that the storm troopers were gone, anyway. 

Leia was usually asleep when he returned to the med center, and he'd pause in the door of her room and just watch the peace on her face. His silent presence would wake her after a few minutes - something which, all things considered, did not surprise him - and she'd blink awake and try to sit up, and they'd spend a while talking before she dropped off again. The improvement was quick, though. By the third day she was staying awake much longer, and by the fourth day it didn't seem to hurt anymore when she pulled herself to sitting. She was pale when they released her to leave, and maybe a bit thin, and definitely still tired a lot, but the coughing had settled down to a leftover bit of throat irritation and the bacteria was purged from her system.

He installed her in their bed in the cabin and tucked her in, which she rolled her eyes at before promptly falling asleep. Back in the empty cockpit, he navigated them through flight control and took off with only the occasional reflexive glance at the copilot's seat. A month into this "honeymoon" trip and he was almost used to flying the _Falcon_ without Chewie, but he usually had Leia beside him for takeoff and landing. Not that he needed a copilot, but . . . well, generally speaking, he hadn't _needed_ a wife, either. Didn't mean it wasn't nice.

Once they were in hyperspace, he set all the bells and whistles to alert them if something went wrong and then he went back to the cabin and slid into bed next to Leia. She didn't exactly wake up, but burrowed close to his shoulder and clasped onto his shirt with one hand. 

"Feel all right?" he asked her softly, his lips against her hair.

She made only a quiet murmur deep in her throat, but four days ago she couldn't have done that without coughing. Good enough for now.

The guilt still dragged at him and left an empty heaviness in his gut, even though Leia hadn't given the smallest sign that she blamed him. But - they'd faced this down. She'd been treated, she was on the mend. He hadn't done so awful at being a husband. And now things could get back to whatever normal was, for them.

And they did, for a while. And that's how everything started.


	2. The real beginning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More things fall into place that will cause big ripples down the line. Leia and Han get back to the business of being married.

After a few days of sleeping around the clock in the _Falcon_ 's cabin, Leia was constantly both groggy and cranky. She was tired of being in bed and annoyed that she didn't really have the energy to do anything else. The ship felt confining and she was itchy to breathe planetside real air, but by her estimate they were still days from their next destination and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Or was there. While she was sitting in the lounge, sipping at tea and trying to feel proud of herself for getting up, Han came through and ran a hand over her head. "Change of plan," he said.

A flicker of interest dragged her eyes up from her tea. "What?"

He was tugging at her unpinned braid, twining it around his wrist, which prevented her from really turning to look at him. "I talked to Rieekan. We're diverting to Chandrila."

"Wha-" Impatiently she tugged her braid from his hands so she could face him. "Did something happen?"

"Everything's fine." His idle stroking shifted to her shoulder. "They found us an apartment, and our last couple planned stops aren't urgent. You'll be more comfortable planetside."

"I'm fine," she protested, even though part of her was already singing at the idea of being outdoors.

"Sure, but being comfortable would be better." He gave her an easy grin as one fingertip slid under her collar. "We can settle in and be at home for a while."

"You won't mind?" she asked with the smallest hint of a waver.

"I won't mind." He kissed her head. "You've been up a while, no coughing."

"Yeah." She rubbed her face hard and tried to swallow her constant crankiness along with a sip of tea. It would get better. She'd get better. It would be good to be on Chandrila and find a bit of normalcy, not that either of them would know what to do with it.

A stab of irritation spiked with an energy that couldn't be released rose in her as she watched Han walk back to the cockpit. It was a reminder that she'd been sick for so long, it had been weeks since he'd done anything more than touch her hand or rub her back.

You'd never know she'd gone the vast majority of her life without sex. Or, hells, that she'd gone the last three years pretty specifically _not having sex with Han_. Not doing it now seemed to be contributing to her fidgety, constantly annoyed feeling.

Her throat tickled right as he climbed into bed with her that night, and she fought back a shallow cough. He'd never go for it if he thought she was still sick.

"All right?" he asked.

She nodded and tried hard not to cough again. As he settled beside her, she rolled to her side and draped an arm and a leg over him.

Smiling in the dim cabin light, he kissed the bridge of her nose and whispered, "Hey, sweetheart."

"Hey," she whispered back. The rasp from a week of coughing fits had almost cleared from her voice, but whispering sounded more normal than her regular tone.

He was rubbing her upper arm in a friendly way, but sweet and friendly cuddling - much as she appreciated that he wanted that from her, always - wasn't going to cut it. She wound her fingers into his hair and tugged him down for a kiss, willing herself not to cough.

He kissed back willingly enough, but when she spread her hand over his buttock and pulled his hips against hers, he broke apart from her. "You sure?" he asked.

There was a little gasp in his voice. It was good to think he'd missed her as well.

"I'm fine," she murmured, her lips against the skin that showed at the opening of his collar. "It's fine."

"Tell me if . . ." he started to say, but he was also already slipping his hand up her shirt, rubbing over her stomach.

She made a wordless sound of acknowledgment and pulled back to just take the shirt off. His hard exhale as he bent his head to her breast was gratifying, as was the way she could feel him hardening against her hip. She rushed to get his clothes unfastened and out of the way.

"No hurry," he said, his forehead leaning against hers, his breathing heavy.

" _Weeks_ ," was all she managed to say.

He laughed and kissed her, stealing her breath - which was still a little too easy to do, these days - while he worked her pants off her hips with one hand. "I know," he said, breaking the kiss with a gasp, which she matched as the heel of his hand pressed against her just right. "I -" She never found out whether there was anything else to that sentence, because he stopped talking as his fingers opened her.

It was heavenly, and she breathed his name and froze for a moment, clutching onto his shoulder. But she needed more - he'd been discreetly clothed around her the last weeks, as if not wanting to imply anything, and suddenly she needed to see him. Another few seconds of pushing and pulling at fabric and he was bare before her eyes, and even more beautiful after the weeks of deprivation. Her hand trailed across his chest, hair springy under her fingertips, and slid lower over one strong thigh and then the other. He was fitter now than he'd been right after the carbonite, only a bit but enough for her to see and feel. That would all be completely behind them soon. . . if she could just stop coughing.

"Leia," he said, low and rough, a plea; and she answered by taking him gently in hand. She relished the familiar feeling of him, the warmth and softness, and the noise he made in his throat when she touched him like that. But she was still impatient. She rolled into him and threw her leg over his hip again, shifting them both into position.

He groaned over her head as he slid into her, kissed her hair, and moaned, "Oh, love."

She nodded, feeling inexplicably teary. 

" _Leia_."

She felt herself trying to pull him even closer, something so impossible that the attempt impeded his thrusting. They rocked together instead, Leia using her internal muscles - something she'd shyly tried out in the first week of their marriage, to great fanfare - to make it better for them both. Judging by the tiny sounds Han was making, it was working.

She loved this, she realized, with her nose against his chest, her arm around his waist, hand holding him tightly against her. Not just the sex in general, not the physical pleasure (not that it wasn't great), but . . . the way she felt about it. The way her mind wrapped around it. That she could take him in like this, it made her feel . . . it was something like the way his entire body could curl around hers when they were lying together. It made her feel strong.

Han might trace everything back to his debt to Jabba, to Cloud City, to her coming to Tatooine and getting sick, to the med center on Kuat - but to Leia, this was the important part. This was where it really started, with this physical reunion; her breathing in her husband's smell while drawing him into her body, both of them murmuring words of love. Surely, that was how a thing should begin.

Not, however much it might be a part of the story, with a giant slug and an alien bacteria and a vicious course of strong antibiotics.

They made up for lost time in that last day before landing on Chandrila. She had a whole new reason for not getting out of bed, and they came together over and over again until she was more than sated and rather sore. Though she didn't blame him, by evening that ache was a whole new source of irritation, as was the dull cramping in her belly that she couldn't account for other than the irregularities of her cycle. _Terrific, Leia_ , she grumped at herself as Han prepared dinner. _Just can't ever be satisfied, can you?_

She really needed to get back to normal.

She fought hard not to snap when Han asked if she was all right, because it wasn't fair to take out whatever this was on him, and because when she'd been sick and scared, exhausted, needy, she'd been grateful to have him be so concerned. He was working so hard, so quietly, to be a good husband to her when he must have wanted to space her a couple times by now.

"I'm just not feeling . . . right," she told him.

He felt her forehead with the inside of his wrist like a proper old grandmother. "Breathing feel okay?"

"I don't think it's that. Just -" She captured his hand and held it. "I'm just out of sorts. I don't know. I'll be better when we get planetside."

"It was too much, what we -"

She shook her head, holding his hand to her cheek. "Don't worry about it."

"I do worry."

"I know." The act of rolling her eyes at him made her smile, which in itself made her feel a bit better. At least, like she could make it to Chandrila without spacing _herself_.

 

. . . She did.

Landing on Chandrila for the first time in four years was stranger than Leia had expected. Hanna City bore few scars from whatever had been done to liberate it from the Empire, and looked much as it had the last time Leia had visited with her father. She had to stand at the top of the _Falcon_ 's ramp for a while, just taking in the view of the port and the towers of the capital. Remembering.

But Han was at her back, and this time instead of a diplomatic welcome there was an anxious-looking aide with a datapad waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Leia felt herself the center of gravity as her husband urged her forward, the distance between him and the aide closing with her between them.

"Your Highness. General Solo." The woman looked up at them through thick glasses as they approached. "My name is Iexara. I am here to show you to the apartment Mon Mothma has recommended for your use."

Leia highly doubted that Mon had selected the place herself, but she trusted that the aides assigned to the task had been conscientious. If anything, it would probably be more than they needed.

It was.

Leia just stood in the doorway for a few moments, staring at an expanse of space that could have fit the command center on Hoth. Behind her, Han whistled softly.

"There are three bedrooms, and an office," Iexara said, as if she hadn't noticed her charges frozen in the doorway. "We were told that an extra room for General Solo's copilot would be desirable."

"Yes," Leia said faintly. Han's hand on her back broke her stupor, and she took a few steps into the apartment. The carpet felt new under her feet.

"Balcony," Iexara said needlessly, pointing toward the shining-clean glass doors. 

"The kitchen is good," said Han, who'd wandered off to the left. "I think the oven is bigger than you."

Through the curious feeling of unreality and shock, Leia summoned up a smile for him. "Good," she said.

"Of course," Iexara said, "if you like it, furnishings can be ordered, or you can choose yourself. We have a suite of rooms for you at the Hotel Hanna in the meantime." 

Leia wanted to be easy, as she'd striven to be for the last three years that she'd depended on the Alliance for . . . everything. She wanted to say they could just stay on the _Falcon_ in port. But she remembered the Hotel Hanna having a garden, and she could already taste the clean air.

"Would you give us a minute?" Han asked.

Iexara slipped out into the hall, and Han came to wrap his arms around Leia. "What do you think?" he asked.

"It's huge," Leia replied.

"Bigger than what you'd have had - before?"

She shook her head. "No. Guess I'm just not used to it anymore."

"Let's go check out the bedrooms." He unwrapped himself from her and pulled her by the hand.

"I'm sure they're fine."

"I'm sure too, but aren't you curious?"

She was, she supposed. And her giggle when Han opened the first "bedroom," found a toilet instead, and declared it "still bigger than the cabin on the _Falcon_ " was the most normal she'd felt all day. 

"Look, it has nice windows," Han called from inside what she assumed was an actual bedroom. "It's the corner."

Slowly she walked into the room, which was empty like the main room and carpeted in the same plush. It did have nice windows. "It's so strange," she said.

"The bedroom?"

She shook her head. "Having - _us_ , _me_ , having a place like this. After . . . I've - I convinced myself, I think, that I wouldn't have a home again. Just military quarters, or moving all the time."

"You didn't really think it would ever be over."

She shrugged. "Or that any of us would survive it."

He came close and held her again. "Too strange?"

"No." She buried her face in his shirt. "I'll adapt."

She felt his short laugh through her whole body. Where he was folded over her, where he was pressed against her. "Yeah," he said. "You will."

She tilted her head way back so that she was looking at him. "I really would love a real hotel right about now," she said. 

"Sure, let's go." His fingers trailed down the side of her face and he gave her one deep, slow kiss. "We've got time to settle in here. As much time as you want."

As much time as she wanted. Imagine that.


	3. And, there it is.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, a thing happened. Everything's getting started.

Everybody kept looking at him as if they expected him to snap.

He got it. He had a reputation. A smuggler. Him and Chewie traveling the galaxy, no strings, no anchor. No home but his beloved ship. 

Thing was, there had always been strings (often bad ones) (Jabba the Hutt?). And not having a home was how he lived, not necessarily how he _wanted_ to live.

An apartment on Chandrila wasn't some kind of prison. It had a nice kitchen and a really comfortable bed. When he was away, it was a place he trusted Leia was safe. They sat out on the balcony together and watched ships come in and out of the port. He still hadn't gotten tired of walking barefoot on the carpet.

It was nice. It was _fine_.

Anyway, Leia having someplace comfortable was important, especially since she wasn't completely all right yet. The cough was gone, and every day she got herself up and met with Mon Mothma and coordinated whatever she was supposed to be coordinating and spent hours in her new office, but Han could tell she was run down. 

He was taking jobs for Mon Mothma's government as they were offered, and occasionally for Rieekan, having resigned his military commission as soon as the war was declared officially over. His longest trip away was two weeks long, about three months after they'd first moved into the apartment. He and Chewie ran interference in some negotiations with an Empire loyalist who didn't want to sell the fuel mined at his facility to the new government. It felt real, like something actually useful to someone, and Han found himself enjoying it.

But when they got back to Chandrila and Leia met them at the port, she looked paler and thinner than Han remembered. As if she'd never gotten over the infection, except no coughing. And sometimes, when she stood up or when she first got out of bed, he'd see her wobble a bit, almost fall.

Finally, one afternoon Leia stood up to go and get something from the bedroom, something completely ordinary, and she wobbled, paused - and Han saw the look on her face, how it completely drained of color, how she looked . . . blank; and he ran over. He was in time to catch her as she fell and lower her onto the sofa.

"Leia!" he said as calmly as he could. "Leia, you with me?"

Thankfully it took only a second or two - still too long, but nothing like the time when she'd had spacer's flu and hadn't woken at all - for her eyes to blink open. "Han?"

"Don't sit up yet," he said. "You all right?"

"Fine - my head . . ." She looked around, brow furrowing. "Did I pass out?"

"Yeah." He ran his hand over her braids. "You feeling sick?"

"No . . . a little dizzy maybe, but it's going away." She tapped his arm. "Let me up."

"Slow." He helped her to a sitting position, still looking intently into her face. Her color was returning to normal, which was more than he could say for his heart rate.

Leia must have seen the look on his face, because she said, "I'm fine."

Uh-huh. "Better make sure," he said, knowing what her reaction would be.

"I'm _completely_ fine."

"People don't just pass out for no reason."

"Maybe I looked at you and swooned."

He grinned in response to her teasing smile, but she wasn't moving him on this one. "Nice try. The last time you dropped like that, I had to carry you to medical. This time we're going while you can still walk yourself there."

"Han -"

"You want to call, or should I?" Inwardly he just desperately hoped she would understand. He wasn't trying to manage her or baby her, he was just . . . she was supposed to be safe now. The war over and all. He wasn't supposed to watch her keel over like that in their own living room.

Her eyes narrowed. He stared back.

After a moment, Leia sighed. "I do feel kind of lightheaded," she admitted.

"So let's find out if Hanna City's hospital is as nice as its hotel," he said, trying to keep his voice chipper.

"I don't need the _hospital_."

"You want to call up Iexara and ask her to find you a doctor?"

Leia sighed again. 

Han thought she looked nervous once they were waiting in the urgent ward, but maybe that was just because of the Twi'lek with a heavy cough and a weird rash. They didn't really have to wait that long, just while one human man was brought in with blaster wounds, followed by an Ithorian with bleeding cuts of some kind.

"Like old times," Han murmured.

Leia only nodded. Eyeing her sidelong, Han wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her a bit closer. She was starting to look pale again, and his stomach dropped with nerves. What if something was really wrong -

Luckily, a human nurse called them back just as his thoughts were starting to get scary. With a look at Han, the nurse said, "You can come by yourself if you prefer priv-"

"He's coming," Leia said quickly.

Han hustled his pace a little, following Leia more closely. 

She seemed calmer though, once she was half-lying on a hospital cot with the back raised and a brisk, friendly doctor was sweeping in with scanner all ready to go. "Well, Your Highness," she said. "Let's see what we can see, eh?"

Han sat back in his uncomfortable chair, feeling like he'd watched this same scene too many times already.

The doctor began scanning at Leia's head and hovered there for a while, humming tunelessly to herself. "Seems great here . . ." she said, moving the scanner down. "Oh." She smiled as her eyes seemed to pass over Leia's hand, resting beside her hip. "Congratulations."

Han glanced at Leia's wedding ring - the one he'd put on her three weeks after the wedding - and saw Leia doing the same. "Thanks," Leia said.

The doctor's attention was focused on the scanner. "Your records should have been updated," she said. "We'll take care of that today. Avoid any future confusion."

"Thank you," Leia said again. Her eyes, too, were locked on the scanner in the doctor's hands, even though she couldn't see the display.

"Well, the good news is, I'm not seeing anything here that worries me." The doctor lowered the scanner and smiled at Leia over it. "Everything looks completely fine."

"Then why've I been . . ." Vaguely, Leia gestured toward her own head.

The doctor set the scanner down on a medical cart, still smiling. "I know it doesn't seem 'okay,' but it's actually very common. Especially if you stand up too fast."

Leia was nodding, but she still sounded unsure. "That does seem to be when it's been happening . . ." As for Han, he was with Leia - not completely ready to believe that it was just fine for her to be suddenly fainting when she stood up?

"Your blood pressure is lower than normal," the doctor went on. "I mean, lower than is normal for you, according to your records, and that was low already. But there's really no reason to worry. You could probably be eating a bit more, and I'd be happy to see you start gaining a little more weight."

That advice did not surprise Han at all.

"But again, everything looks fine." The doctor was beaming at them both now in a kind of reassuring way. "Now, do you know the sex? If you don't, and you want to, I can tell you now."

There was a small pause, before Leia said, "What?"

By the time the word was out of her mouth, Han's brain had caught up.

The doctor seemed blissfully unaware that she had just dropped a bomb. "The sex? It's perfectly clear on the scan. I know some people would rather be surprised, though."

Han's first conscious thought was _did she know?_ Then he looked at Leia's face, which had gone gray, and knew that she hadn't.

Leia's mouth opened and closed a few times without any sound coming out. Han felt like he should help her, somehow, but he couldn't form words either.

"What?" Leia finally managed to repeat.

The doctor looked like she'd just caught on that two of the people in the room were a few steps behind. "Ah," she said. "I thought - when I congratulated you, I - sorry -"

"I thought you meant - we got married," Leia stammered. "The ring, I thought you were looking at -"

"I did too." Han was now able to produce words, although he didn't seem able to do much more than agree with Leia.

The doctor's face and tone gentled, as though she were afraid Leia might faint again right here. Which seemed like a real possibility. "The scan suggests it's about seventeen weeks."

"Sev- _four months_!" Leia said. Her eyes darted to meet Han's gaze. She looked horrified. "How? I mean how did I not know, but - how? I - my injections are up to date!" By now she was visibly taking deep breaths, a giveaway that she was trying to calm herself. Han moved to sit on the edge of her cot and put an arm around her shoulders, realizing he should have done it sooner. "I mean," Leia added after another deep breath, "no, I just realized, no, they're not. But they were until . . . a month ago maybe, and you're saying . . ."

The doctor had started flipping through files on a datapad, and she paused with her finger tapping the edge. "You had a bacterial infection," she said.

"Partthocillia," Han supplied, his arm tightening around Leia. What, was she about to tell them it wasn't . . . _a pregnancy_ he whispered in his mind for the first time . . . that it was some kind of infection instead?

"You had a very strong course of antibiotics - eighteen weeks ago," the doctor continued.

"Oh," Leia said, as if that were meaningful information. Her hand fumbled on the cot, found Han's leg and clutched on. "Oh no. I knew - I knew that, I knew."

"I still don't," Han said, looking to the doctor for an explanation.

"Some of the antibiotics used to treat severe infections can interfere with contraception," the doctor said. She was still speaking very gently. "Of course, we can't know if that's what happened, or if the hormonal injection just failed. I'm not a pregnancy specialist - you'll want one of those, by the way - but there's always that tiny chance . . ."

_If there's a tiny chance,_ Han thought, _that'll be us_.

"Why don't I give you a few moments?" the doctor said, and slipped from the room.

Completely at a loss for what else to do, Han just kissed Leia's temple.

"I'm sorry," she gasped against his shoulder.

Whatever either of them needed to say right now, it wasn't that. "For what?"

"For - I should have known, I _did_ know it wasn't safe - I wasn't thinking, and - how did I go four months without knowing?"

"I didn't know either," he pointed out.

"But it's my -" Her hand waved over her midsection. 

"And I live with you." Sure, now he was realizing that he couldn't remember her last cycle, but she'd been skinny and constantly stressed out the whole time he'd known her, and things had never seemed that regular in the first place. 

"Do you think it hurt - him? her?" Her hand tightened on his thigh. "We forgot to ask the sex."

"I think we were too busy going into shock," he said. He took a deep breath of his own. They could do this. Talk a lot. Argue about whose fault it was (though they were usually trying to blame each other, not themselves). They could handle this.

They could handle a civil war; they could handle anything. Right?

"I can't believe I forgot to get my injection renewed," she said.

"Uh, well. Being three months pregnant already seems to have kept that from mattering too much."

"I - Han -"

Her face had gone gray again in a way he instinctively recognized. It was that word, it'd had the same impact on him. _Pregnant_. No one had said it out loud until then. "You going to be sick?" he asked.

She'd gone back to taking deep breaths. In between, she gasped, "I don't think so. Not sure yet."

"Well. Take your time." He patted her leg, feeling awkward. "Hey, that's something. You should be past all that dicey part, right?"

Leia exhaled hard and swallowed. "I guess."

"Lucky?"

She shrugged, pressing her lips together. "My mother never had a pregnancy that lasted this long," she said after a moment. "You know. My real - and our birth mother died in childbirth."

Well that sure as hell wasn't happening. "At least it's not twins?" he said.

She gave a short laugh that ended in a slightly hysterical whimper. "Can we - what are we going to - Han, what -"

"Hey, hey. C'mere." Gripping her hand, he said, "We're going to be fine. We . . . we have the extra room, we can . . . probably afford it, I guess - Chewie likes kids, we're going to be great. You'll take it to the Senate. We'll make you a little cradle pod."

"Oh we will?"

"Unless you want me to take it to the shipyard."

"We've got to stop calling it 'it.'" Leia's grip on his hand tightened. "Did she specifically say it wasn't twins?"

"Uh." Han honestly found himself trying to think back. "All right, we'll add that to our list of followup questions."

"Let's move it to the top."

"Yeah." This was - this was surreal, but . . . Leia'd just made a joke, kind of. Leia joking was at least not Leia hyperventilating.

The door opened, and the doctor came back in looking hopeful.

"There's just the one, right?" Han blurted.

The doctor's quizzical look would probably have been hilarious, if he hadn't been pretty interested in the answer.

"I'm a twin," Leia explained on a careful, steadying exhale.

"Oh." The doctor's face cleared as she pressed the door shut. "Yes. Just one. And . . . did you want to know the sex?"

Leia looked to Han. She still looked so stunned; expecting her to care whether the shock was a - a little princess or a prince, was more than anybody should expect of her right now. "I don't really like surprises," she finally said.

Come to think of it, neither did he. So, as Leia would say, they'd get past this part and then they'd deal with the next decision, and the next. "Fire away," he told the doctor.

She smiled. "It's a boy."

"Are you sure?" Han asked, idiotically.

"Well, it's a boy, or a Twi'lek."

Nestled against his side, Leia actually laughed. Not a lot, but it was there.

"Would you like the referral to obstetrics?"

That question seemed kind of loaded, like it was a language Han didn't quite speak. This suspicion was confirmed when Leia, who was twisting her fingers, looked at him and said, softly, "Yes. Right?"

He couldn't even have said for a certainty why he was relieved, but he was. Overwhelmingly. It dawned on him that his first reaction had been shock but not, like Leia's, _horror_. And he was glad, glad that she seemed to have gotten past that.

He nodded, swallowing hard.

His cool lasted until he tried to stand up, when he suddenly felt as lightheaded as Leia must have. His knees felt weak. His hands were shaking. He had, he realized, been so focused on keeping Leia calm that it hadn't all really sunk in for him. Until now. 

Leia, of course, had noticed his moment of faltering. "Han?"

The doctor was gone. He swallowed again. "We can - this is okay, right?"

"You're the one who said it was," she said with some alarm. "Don't bail on me now, flyboy."

Well that pushed some uncomfortable buttons. "You know I wouldn't."

Immediately her face softened. "I know. I didn't mean that."

"I just meant - I've been around a while, you know, I guess I'm ready, but you - this can't be what you wanted to be doing, the second the war ended."

Leia was quiet for what felt like a long time. He would have worried, but he could see that she was thinking. "I haven't had a lot of choice about what I wanted to be doing," she said eventually. "In a while. This is - when you think about it, it's by far the least horrible of those things." She looked up at him with a fleeting show of shyness. "Would we have talked about this someday?"

"'Course we would," he said without having to think about it.

"So it's just . . . fast." She took a deep breath. "Really fast."

"Scared?"

"Yeah."

He nodded. "Me too."

She nodded back, firmly. "Good."


	4. But is it a tree.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia processes.

There were numerous times in Leia's life when her entire energy had been focused around _just not fainting_. Over Scarif, waiting for the transmission with the vibrating need to flee and everyone watching her. On the Death Star, fearing what Vader could pluck from her mind if her guard fell ( _could_ a Force user read her mind if she was unconscious? She should ask Luke.). And now.

She now had a _lot_ of things to ask Luke.

Don't faint. Don't faint.

If anything, Han might and she'd have to try to catch him. If the lift doors opened and they were both unconscious, someone would suspect chemical weapon attack.

Han was a color she hadn't seen since he'd fallen out of carbonite and landed, damp and sticky and helpless, at her feet.

She'd made eye contact. "How you doing?" he asked.

She shrugged and tried to take assessment. Her head felt weird. She probably still wasn't going to throw up, but that was a close call. Was something moving? Did they move at this stage? "We didn't ask anything," she said out loud. "We know literally nothing except how old it is and that it has a penis."

"Well, it's healthy. _He_." Han squinted as if this might help cement this information in his head. "He's healthy. And so are you. And if you eat more you might stop passing out. That's all . . . good. Right?"

They were worthless at this. They couldn't even give it to the Jedi to raise. There were no Jedi. Only Luke. Luke could not raise a baby. 

_Neither can you_ , her mind helpfully pointed out.

. . . she _hoped_ it was her mind. What if it was a message from the Force? The Force thought she was going to be a terrible parent. She definitely might throw up.

Han had never seen her throw up before. This was about to be a beautiful new moment for them.

"I don't even know anyone who's ever had a baby," she said. "Shara. That's it. And I never talked to her about it, I haven't talked to her at all since Endor. My own mother never had a baby."

Han sidled over and wrapped his arms around her. Face against his shirt, she inhaled deeply. His scent had been comforting to her since Yavin IV, maybe it would do the trick now. Did they really have time for this? Was this the slowest lift in galactic history?

The doors opened with a faint ding, so no. There was one human waiting, a male in Chandrilan tunic who said, low and sympathetic, "Bad news? Gods be with you," as Han shepherded Leia out.

_It's probably bad news for the kid,_ she thought.

Could it hear her? Maybe she should try to be more positive.

As they settled in the back of a speeder cab, she instinctively rested her hand on her belly for focus and reached out, the way she did when she wanted Luke. Immediately she felt a brush of greeting, her brother's awareness. All right, so thus far she _only_ knew how to find Luke. Dismissing him, she closed her eyes and thought into her hand, breathed out into her palm. There was - was there something? A fuzzy uncurious something, something blue swimming behind her eyelids?

It didn't reach back, that she could feel. The baby was only half her, anyway, maybe it took after Han? Did that matter, or? The Force was supposed to be in every living thing, whether or not they could use it, so - the life she was touching might be Han, or her baby, or a particularly lively tree for all she knew. She needed Luke.

He was there, not trying to send her any message in words - at least, not trying very hard - but he wanted her to know he was paying attention. Before she could second-guess herself, she thought hard _I need you to come to Chandrila._

He was definitely listening; there was a flutter of alarm in her body that wasn't hers. _Are you in trouble? Is it Han? Are you all right?_

Leia tamped down her burst of hysteria at the realization that _are you in trouble_ and _is it Han_ were pretty on the nose as far as questions went. _No, I'm not in trouble, we're married, everything is fine, this is fine._ Calm. She could send calm. She'd spent her entire life forcing herself to _be_ calm; surely she could manage to project it?

_We're all right. I just really need to talk to you. In person. As soon as you can._

She could feel Han staring her, and opened her eyes to meet his.

"You okay?" he asked. "Are you - having a pain, or - did he move or something?"

"No, nothing like that," she said with an inexplicable sense of disappointment. "I was just talking to Luke."

"Oh." He blinked a few times. She could tell he was a little flummoxed, and rightly so - they didn't often talk about her doing things like this.

"I'm guessing he doesn't know a thing about having a Force-sensitive baby," she said, ". . . or a Force-sensitive having a baby? But he does know ten times more about the Force in general than I do, and that seems like it might be important."

"Right. Right."

Oh good, she'd made Han more scared.

After a few deep breaths, he reached over and put his hand on top of hers. "So you think he's - I mean I guess that makes sense, you and Luke being . . ."

"I don't know, but I feel like I should know a lot more than I do." Which really summed up the whole situation, didn't it? She needed to know a lot more about _everything_.

"Since they weren't supposed to have families or anything . . . yeah, wonder if anybody knows." Han tapped a fingertip thoughtfully against the back of her hand. "So can you - sense him, or - ?"

"I don't know," she said, her frustration bleeding through in her voice. "I haven't practiced enough - I know what Luke feels like, I guess I knew him my whole life, or else it's because he's sending back - but anything else, I don't know. I feel something but it could be anything."

It was nice of Han not to point out that she hadn't _wanted_ to learn about using the Force. Funny how quickly all of her fears and qualms had faded in comparison to this much larger fear, that she had this situation to manage and the situation might know how to use the Force and she really needed to be prepared for that.

She also envied Han a little for how quickly he'd been able to adapt to the existence of a "he," while she was still just screaming internally in wordless terror.

_Sorry,_ she said to the life-force she'd found, hoping she wasn't really apologizing to a tree. _I'll come around. I've got a few months, you probably won't have a completely hopeless mama. Your father swears he's held a baby before, at least. Your uncle . . . your uncle gets drunk on his birthday and swims with the Force. It's all fine._

Han Solo as a father. She hadn't taken a moment for that yet. She could see it. He'd be casual with it, but calm, like he was with the baby pilots. 

Leia had weathered the loss of her parents and her entire world, she'd won a war, she'd fought stormtroopers and strangled a Hutt, she was about to be a minister of the New Republic, and at this moment she couldn't care that she was supposed to be tough and independent. If Han could take care of her _and_ the baby, maybe they'd all come out of this alive. She leaned her head on his shoulder, hands wrapped around his arm.

"You've got this under control, right?" she whispered.

"Ah - sure. 'Course I do." Her need seemed to give him strength; he sounded surer and surer as he kept talking. "We're fine, sweetheart. We've always been fine, right?"

Other than that time he'd ended up in carbonite - sure. 

Han had a little datapad he'd pulled from somewhere. "Talk to Luke," he narrated aloud, typing awkwardly with her still holding onto one of his arms. "Book about babies."

Leia shifted her cheek against his upper arm, reassured at this display of preparedness. "Is that putting the cart before the -"

"Book about pregnancy," he acknowledged, tapping away. "Pregnancy doctor."

"Obstetrician."

"Right." He amended, misspelled but that wasn't important. "Um. Crib . . . and . . . baby . . . things."

"That ought to cover it."

He ignored, or missed, her sarcasm. "What else?"

What else did she want to know? Everything. "Make friends with someone who has children?" she suggested.

"Besides Chewie?"

"Someone who won't expect it to hang from trees."

"Humanoid friends with children," he dutifully noted. "Hey, Wexley."

"Hmm?"

"Wexley. She's a freight pilot. . . Norra. She has a kid."

"Oh. Okay." It was beginning to sink in what a bizarre conversation that would be. _Hello, can you tell me something about having a child, because I am pregnant and one hundred percent useless._

"Home."

"Huh?" Oh. Their home, as in, the cab had stopped in front of their building. As she stepped out, Han's hand lingered on her belly. His thumb stroked her shirt a little. _He wants it_ , she marveled. _He really, actually does_. Han caught her eye and smiled, the kind of smile that - well, that often led to how they'd made the baby. She might - might - be able to feel something other than terrified and slightly sick. Maybe.

Maybe.

He reached for her that night, before she'd had a chance to change into her nightclothes. She melted against him, against his mouth, her arms around his neck, so grateful for the moment to feel, for the first time in hours and hours, not like a patient or a problem or _someone's mother_ or a frightened little girl who needed to be taken care of, but just a woman. Just Leia, with her husband. 

He was flicking at her buttons, parting her shirt with one hand while still holding her close, his face nuzzling at her hair, her neck . . . and then he was leaning back, eyes still heavy-lidded but just . . . looking.

"What -" She didn't want to break the mood; it wasn't broken, yet, but - "Are you staring at my breasts?" Of course there was nothing inherently wrong with him looking at her breasts, it was definitely a contemplated part of the activity, but this was . . . surveying.

"Trying to decide if they're bigger," he admitted, giving her a half-smile. "I read a thing."

"I . . ." She wanted to be indignant, but now she also wanted to know. She spread her arms helplessly. " _Are_ they?"

"Not sure." He kissed her temple as he gently stroked her breasts with both hands, then squeezed a little.

" _Ow_."

"Yeah. It said that, too." He gave both breasts another apologetic stroke, thumbs brushing her nipples. "I'll be more careful."

"Okay." That feeling of normalcy was fading fast. "Not too careful," she begged, running her hands down his back, pulling him into her. "You've never treated me like I was going to break, hotshot. Don't start now."

"Okay," he said into her neck, sounding entirely too uncertain.

"I mean it. Please." How often had she ever said _please_ to him, in any context? He could probably count it on his fingers.

And - oh, well. She must be right that it wasn't very often, because it seemed to do something to him that put thoughts of being gentle and careful right out of his mind. She made note of that, while enjoying the result.

They slept in a spiral, him curled around her and her curled around an imaginary bubble as if her abdomen had already swelled. Like a galaxy with this speck at the center.

Luke took a month to arrive. By that time she had a tiny but undeniable bump, and Han _loved_ it. Couldn't stop looking at it. And bizarrely, it made him - well, she'd read that she was supposed to have an increased sex drive as time went on, but so far she wasn't the one who seemed to exist in a constant state of arousal. She couldn't even really blame him, for any of it. She'd be annoyed if it felt like some kind of pride thing, or his virility on display, but it wasn't that at all. There was no swagger to him (well - no more than usual), he just - he _talked_ to it, palm curving around the bump, and then he'd kiss her belly, and then one thing led to another and he was just ready to go, at all hours. It was like he'd waited his whole damn life for this, and meanwhile she was still waiting to find out if she was talking to a tree.

The night before -

Her brother's ship was landing, and the night before was not something she needed to be thinking about when she greeted him.

(On the _balcony. Outside_.)

She didn't have to worry about the expression on her face when she actually saw Luke, bounding toward her with his arms out. They hadn't seen each other in six months, and his presence - his Force-presence - was as golden and comforting as ever.

"I'm sorry it took so long," he said, repeating what had been a constant refrain for the last month.

"It's fine, it's fine. Like I said, we just need to talk. A lot. Now is - there's enough time, now is all right."

Something must have leaked through in her thoughts, which she'd guarded so well all these weeks. Luke backed up, out of her embrace, looked down to the area of her abdomen, and looked back up again, eyes wide.

"Yeah," she said.

"Wh- already?"

Her face fiery, she nodded. "Already."

"When -"

"About four months."

"Four months along _already_?"

Oh gods. She motioned for Luke to keep his voice down. "No, he'll be born in four months."

"Has it even been that long?" he hissed.

"Please shut up," she said, unable to decide whether to laugh or blush to death. "Yes. It has."

"He?"

She nodded. "Apparently."

Luke glanced down and then closed his eyes, briefly. "Yeah. He. Neat."

"So you can - he - I've been trying but . . ."

"Yeah. He's there, it's . . . it's different from anything else. It's - hey, a nephew. I have a nephew." He beamed.

"You have most of a nephew." In public she fought the urge to curl her hand over the bump. "Can you show me? Not here, but -"

"That what you wanted to talk about?" His hand at her back, he steered them both away from the landing strip. "Yeah, we should definitely . . . you're right, there's a lot to think about. How's Han doing?"

(On the _balcony_.)

She fought the blush. "He was as shocked as I was, but - he seems happy." _Very. Happy._

She was not going to make it through four months of her brother spouting Force theory while her husband wanted sex morning, noon, and night. 

Theirs had always been gearing up to be the kind of story that ended with _and that's how the princess lost her mind_. She just hadn't realized it until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed a poke to start writing again after what has been yet another RL whirlwind. That poke came in the form of Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week, so big thanks to the folks over in the Game of Thrones fandom for luring me to my keyboard with a themed week. And now here we are.


	5. The Jedi.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia begins to understand how connections work in the Force. Han watches.

Han would have thought that Luke's arrival would make Leia less nervous, but she actually seemed worse. She practically vibrated sometimes.

"What are you afraid he's going to say?" Han asked once, about a week before Luke arrived, when he had finally figured out what he thought the problem was.

He knew what Leia looked like when she was about to put him off, and he watched her slowly - reluctantly - decide not to do that. "That we shouldn't have risked it," she said. Which was pretty much what he expected.

"Well we didn't do it on purpose," he pointed out.

"Han."

"I'm just saying, it's not like it was a calculated risk." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Look, he's not going to say that. He's the one who's all about 'there was still good in Vader,' you know. All that. And Anakin Skywalker was a normal little kid as far as we know."

"Great - so any kid could -"

"Yeah," he said, because that didn't mean what she thought it did. "Any kid could join the dark side. Ours, somebody else's. It's not hereditary."

"But when somebody else's kid decides to do evil, he can't crush people's throats with his mind."

"Tarkin didn't need to be a Jedi to cause plenty of harm," Han said, sliding his hands down Leia's back and pulling her close. "Or Jabba. Everybody has to, you know, try not to raise a psychopath. We're not that different."

She just looked at him, while he kissed her forehead, rubbed her back, tried everything he knew how to do.

It had occurred to him, once or twice (a day), that he might feel left out if Leia could talk to their kid in their minds, the way she could with Luke. If she had more of a connection with him than Han could. But on the other hand, it might not be so bad to _only_ have responsibility for the normal parent stuff. To not have to worry about guiding him so he'd only find the light side of the Force, or however it worked. 

When she brought Luke home, the kid hugged Han with a bright smile and a "congratulations!" that didn't feel - well, didn't feel like he was really thinking _hope you didn't just create the next Palpatine_. So that was good.

"I think we should get right to it, if you're ready," Luke said to Leia, so Han got ready to make himself scarce.

But Leia said, "Han should stay. I mean," she added, looking at Han, "if you want. But you should know how it works. You need to know."

She was right; regardless of whether he could _do_ or really even understand any of it, he probably couldn't be a father to the baby without grasping a little more of this Force stuff. So he nodded, kind of stiffly, and stayed seated on the couch.

"Can we," Luke said, looking thoughtfully around their apartment, "can we sit over there? Will that be all right?"

He was pointing to the floor near the balcony door. Leia shrugged. "Why not."

"You won't be uncomfortable?"

"I'm not _that_ pregnant yet." Leia settled on the floor, legs crossed. "Anything special?"

"No, that's fine." Luke sat down across from her, two feet of space between them. "So, here's the thing. I think we shouldn't work on you finding the baby in the Force until you can learn to block. Right now - without a block between us, you and I would be getting everything each other is feeling all the time. And we're really connected, probably since before we were born; but the baby - you're his mother. I think it's going to be even stronger. And right now I'm doing all the work of blocking us off, but he's too little to learn, so you have to."

"I don't understand," Leia said. "Why would I want to block him out?"

"I don't mean completely. Like, you always know I'm there if you reach out, right? You can always sense that I _exist_."

"I guess," said Leia. "But I couldn't all along."

"No, I think our connection was - broken, until we remembered it was there. Until we figured out how to find each other. But now you can. It'll be that way with the baby, too. The kind of block I'm talking about, he'll be able to sense you. But he won't completely feel every time you're scared, or mad, or under stress . . . or, every time you and Han -"

"Got it," Leia said. "Point taken."

"I'm afraid if you connect with him now, and you can't manage yet not to send him everything . . ." Luke grimaced. "I mean, if he gets scared in there and you can't do anything about it -"

"That sounds bad," said Leia, and Han could see her getting tense again. He clenched his hands together to keep himself from going over there to touch her.

"So we'll just work on you and me till you get it," Luke said. "So just. Take a minute, close your eyes and really reach out."

Leia closed her eyes and tilted her chin up a little. After a few seconds, she smiled, a small, genuine smile that she probably wasn't even aware of.

None of them moved, or made a sound, for several moments. Then Leia said calmly, "If you're explaining things, could you do it out loud? For Han?"

"Oh," said Luke, without opening his eyes. "Sorry. I was saying, I'm going to stop blocking Leia now. So she'll see what it's like when we're totally connected with no barriers."

"Okay," Han said, feeling sort of stupid talking to two people who had their eyes closed.

"Oh my," Leia said a second later. She actually leaned back a bit, as if reeling. Both twins - well at first, Han realized, neither of them was breathing at all, and then they started to breathe in perfect synchronization. It was more than a little creepy.

Then Leia's eyes squinted tighter and her stomach contracted as if someone had hit her. Slowly, her eyes fluttered open and she spent a moment staring at the wall over Luke's head. "It's a lot," she said, twisting to look at Han. "I mean. I can definitely feel the difference."

He gave her what he hoped was an encouraging nod.

"I don't know if I can do it, though," she said, turning her attention back to her brother. "I can see the block, but I don't see where it's coming from."

Luke opened his eyes and frowned at her. "You can _see_ it?"

"Yeah. It's like . . ." She sketched something in the air that looked like a cube with one very definite side and three kind of wishy-washy ones. "But where it's coming from is -" She reached her hand through the imaginary cube she'd just drawn, grasping at something. "It's through there, and I can't figure it out."

"That's - wow. That's interesting." Luke's eyes flickered toward Han. "I don't see anything when I do it. I just - feel it, it's just there."

"But how do you feel it without visualizing it?" Leia asked.

"I just . . . do. Look, you're naturally better at this than I am. You've done it before without meaning to - when you were being interrogated, our - Vader himself couldn't get into your head, you must have blocked him. Except you did it completely, or he would have known you were using the Force. You have some instinct I don't. It took me weeks to get this, but I feel like we just have to tap into whatever you're sensing there."

Leia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Let me see it again."

"See - okay." Luke closed his eyes, too.

"Out loud," Leia said after a few moments.

"Sorry, Han. I'm trying to - give the block a shape in my mind, for Leia. If that's how it works for her, maybe I can try to . . . show her how I'm doing it, or something."

"I don't know what that's supposed to be," Leia said drily.

"It's a - there. Better?"

"Are you just picturing a wall?"

"Yes?" Luke said.

"I know what walls look like. That's not helping." She shifted. "Don't try to picture what I was picturing. Try to picture what you're feeling."

Han was getting interested in spite of himself, partly because it was kind of hilarious watching Leia take over. Hilarious, and predictable.

" _Ow_ ," Luke said.

"Sorry." Leia frowned deeply, eyes still closed. "Too much?"

"How did you not give Vader a headache?" Luke said, wincing. 

"What did she do?" Han asked, finally not able to contain his curiosity.

"It's like I asked her to blindfold me, so she punched me in both eyes," said Luke.

"I should not do that to the baby," Leia said.

"You should _not_ do that to the baby." Luke inhaled and exhaled, slowly. "Try again, less . . . angry. You're not defending yourself now. You're just setting boundaries."

Even to Han, that made enormous amounts of sense. Right now, Leia looked like she was preparing to face down Vader again. It was probably the only way she'd ever tapped into what she could do.

"Relax your face, sweetheart," he called out, before he remembered that he wasn't supposed to be participating.

But Luke said - without opening his eyes to look at her - "That's right, Leia. Relax completely. Try not to - try not to use fear. It's just an exercise."

Han sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and watched Leia try to breathe. Slowly, slowly, she started to look more calm, less rigid. For some reason, the hair on his arms was standing up. The room felt charged.

"Good," Luke said. He opened his eyes and tapped Leia on the knee so that hers opened as well. "That was interesting. It worked, but what happened?"

"I found Han," Leia said, grinning.

"I'm right here," Han pointed out.

"No, in the Force," she said. "I think - I was trying to feel safe, and - now I know what you feel like. Now that I've - now you're just _there_."

"But I don't have the Force," he protested.

"Every living thing has the Force," Luke said. "You don't have the ability to _use_ it, but you still have a presence. I can sense it, I know when Leia's with you as opposed to when she's alone. I don't think she's ever connected to any specific presence but me before, though."

"No." Leia paused, then got to her feet and moved to sit next to Han on the couch, as if she suddenly needed to be near him. He tucked her under his arm, having no problem with that.

"We'll keep working on that till it's natural," Luke said. "When you don't have to try so hard, then we'll move on."

"Just give me a minute," Leia said. 

Han kissed her temple and rested his hand on the tiny little curve she was getting in her abdomen. 

"What -" Leia said, just as something jumped under Han's hand.

Han looked down as if he would be able to see anything. "Did he just -"

"I think." Her hand nudged his aside, pressing down. "I think so."

"Did he move?" Luke was off the floor in a flash, landing on Leia's other side. "Has he moved before?"

"No." Leia moved her hand an inch this way, an inch that way. "Did you - talk to him, or something?"

"No, but maybe he sensed the Force moving around us . . ."

"Is he still doing it?" Han asked, eagerly, hungrily, because Force or no Force, this was still _his_ baby.

"No," Leia said. "Wait - no. I think he stopped."

Han leaned down to find Leia's lips with his, wondering if he could manage to send a message to Luke in the Force to shove off for a while, so they could take the time to be just them and the suddenly lively life they'd made. Maybe if he thought it really, really hard.

"I want to try again," Leia said, sitting up, so maybe he should have been directing it at her. "If he's moving already - I don't want to waste time."

"If you're ready," Luke said, sliding back down to his spot on the floor. 

Han already felt like something was missing, with Leia starting to get up; but she turned back and kissed him and put her hand on his chest and whispered, "You're helping." So that was all right.

If he was giving her strength, or making her feel less afraid, he could do that.


	6. Rathtar and Mynock.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han would never choose to be away from Leia before their baby arrives.

He had to go.

This was not a debate. 

He would _literally_ never, not in a thousand years, forgive himself if Chewie went off to liberate Kashyyyk alone. Never.

Unfortunately, at the moment he also seemed to believe that he would never forgive himself if he went away while Leia was pregnant. This was clearly incorrect.

Equally unfortunately, he didn't take it well when Leia said she didn't need him. Which she had to admit was predictable.

"Of course I need you," she said to his wounded, paling face, her hands out in a placatory gesture. "It's just - I need you a lot less now than I'm going to."

His woundedness only about half melted into confusion. "I - okay?"

"Look - if you go now, you'll be gone for - a month? Maybe?"

Han was fiddling with a pair of spoons he'd been about to put away. He was biting his lip. Seeing him nervous was . . . strange. "Maybe six weeks," he said. "The operation - command thinks that's what it'll take. That's the plan."

"So you'll be back in plenty of time before he comes. Whereas if you don't agree to lead this strike, command will put it off and you know that."

"Yes!" he said, as if that made his point rather than hers.

"Well unless they're going to put it off for _years_ \- which I know you don't want for Chewie . . ." She reached for his hand, the one not playing with spoons. "You're the one who says he knows about babies. I'm going to be useless."

"You're not - you're his _mother_ , sweetheart, you're -"

"Not the point. The point is, right now, all I have to do is remember to eat every four hours. That's as complicated as it gets. And Luke is here if I really need anything. After he's born - then I'll need real help. I mean . . ." That was wrong. She took her hand back so she could rub both of them across her face. "I don't even mean _I'll_ need help. We're - we're both his parents, we both need to be there. But especially you, because he'll be on the outside and I have no idea what to do."

He was waffling. He'd put down the spoons.

Leia stepped close and put her arms loosely around his waist. "I _want_ you now, I want you all the time, but I'll _need_ you then. You have to go do this for Chewie now so you can come home and be with me and the baby when he comes."

Han was quiet for a while, resting his forehead against the top of her head. "You're not going to be useless," he said.

"I'm not going to be alone, either," she said firmly. "You are going to do this and come home."

"I'd never not be here." He shifted his hands, pressed his palms over her belly. "You know that."

"I do know that and I don't want you to have to choose between Chewie and us."

"I'm worried about not coming back," he said quietly.

"In that case," she said, hands on either side of his face, "you should be worried about me learning how to use the Force to visit eternal torment on your soul. Because I _would_."

"I'm serious," he said. "I always worried about not making it back - that's why . . ."

He didn't finish, but he didn't need to. They'd hashed this all out what felt like a thousand years ago, on a limping _Falcon_ between Hoth and Bespin. 

She tilted her face up to kiss him, two, three times. "And I always worried you didn't want to come back," she said; another thing they both already knew. "I don't now."

"Good," he said, and no more talking was done for a while.

The tookas were the next thing.

"You had pets, right?" Han said out of the blue, three days before he and Chewie were scheduled to leave. "On Alderaan?"

"When I was younger," she said, brow furrowed in confusion. "The last one died just before I went to the Junior Legislature and we never got around to . . . why?"

"I was thinking we should get one. Some. Right?"

She was still confused, and he was doing something to his blaster and not looking at her, so his face didn't help. "For . . . I think he's going to be too little to play with a pet. For a while."

"No." He stopped tinkering and rubbed his nose, turning toward her. "I mean . . ." One slightly dirty hand gestured in a wide sweep, taking in their living space. "Have you ever really lived alone?"

Leia didn't stop frowning, but she did consider the question. "No. I guess. I had my own apartment on Coruscant when I was a senator, but the Palace Guard were always there."

"And on base ever since, or with me."

"Yes." She folded her hands around one knee, unconsciously adopting a polite listening posture. "Why?"

"Don't you think it might be weird? To be all by yourself here?"

"I'll be at work some of the time, same as usual, and Luke will be here sometimes," she said before really thinking. Of course none of that would be at night, and Luke wouldn't spend every evening with her. "Maybe it might," she allowed. "You'll be gone longer than you usually are."

"So a pet would be some company," he said. "Something else, you know, alive in the place."

She was suddenly terrified that he was thinking of some massive, vicious animal that would serve as a guard while he was gone. "What kind of pet are you thinking of?" Of course, by asking she'd conceded the point. Why not. They'd already have a baby and a Wookiee.

Maybe they could also get one of those man-eating plants from Binaros, throw it on the balcony to deter burglars. Complete the menagerie.

Han was going to wash his hands, which meant either that he was done with the blaster or was hoping to touch her, or both. Probably both. "I don't know," he said with an odd air of nervousness, "I was thinking a loth-kitten or a tooka of some kind. Something friendly."

A kitten she could handle. Probably. "We had tookas when I was young," she said. "It'll have to be two. One on its own will be lonely." It was occurring to her that she might actually burst into tears if someone handed her a tooka kitten - even without the pregnancy hormones - but that was a bridge to be crossed when they came to it.

"We could go later," Han called from the kitchen. "I saw some the other day."

"In the market?"

"No, there's a place. For strays and all."

The "place" was much less depressing than Leia had feared. Apparently on Chandrila even stray loth-cats and canids - the occasional vulptex included - were treated as valuable. Han surprised her by going straight for the smallest, fuzziest, most helpless-looking tookas in sight, not that she really knew what she'd expected. Something more . . . rugged? A skinny tom with a torn ear? One eye? A smuggler's tooka, whatever that looked like. Not -

"The pink one looks kind of sad," Han said, pointing to a loth-kitten with an exceptionally fluffy coat. It did look up at Leia with what seemed like a pleading expression.

Leia wrinkled her nose. "Little kids love the pink ones, though. Someone will take it."

"Okay." He paused, looking around, and Leia had to stifle a laugh at the sight of her smuggler husband - blaster belt and all, even on a safe world - with his hands on his hips surrounded by cages of small animals. "Should it be two who already get along?"

"That might be easiest?" The young Chandrilan woman who seemed to be in charge was tentative and a bit starstruck. "Have you - ah - have you raised tookas before?"

Leia realized she was as interested in Han's answer as the woman was, so she only raised an eyebrow.

He had reached into a cage to stroke the head of a pinkish-lavender loth-cat. "Not raised 'em - I've sometimes been someplace where I fed a stray or two. She did, though," he said, nodding at Leia.

"When I was a child," she said. It was occurring to her that someone else - her parents, or a servant - had actually taken care of all of the Organa pets' needs. Then again, servants had pretty much taken care of all the Organas' needs too, and she'd adjusted to doing without that so far.

From a cage to her left, a small gray kitten was staring intently in Leia's direction. When it saw her looking back, it opened its mouth in a surprisingly loud and insistent mew. Impressed, Leia opened the cage door. A second kitten she hadn't noticed - more orange-brown than gray - bolted for the opening and promptly climbed Leia's shoulder. She was prepared to stop it from fleeing, but once it was up there it seemed happy enough to stay.

"Curious guy," Han said.

Leia nodded and winced slightly as the kitten's claws dug into her shoulder. Meanwhile, the one she'd first noticed was rubbing its head and jaw on the small curve of her belly.

Han sidled over behind her. "What's that one doing?" he asked.

"I think he's claiming me."

Han reached up to rub the head of the kitten on Leia's shoulder. "These two definitely seem to like you."

"They're siblings," the Chandrilan woman noted. "The brown one is a female."

"Good," Leia said, picking up the kitten that was now trying to wrap its front paws around her belly.

"Good?" Han repeated.

Leia tucked the kitten into her arm. "You, Chewie, Luke. The baby. I'm already outnumbered; I can't be having two male tookas on top of it."

"Guess that's fair." He extracted the female tooka from Leia's shoulder and held it up at his eye level. "You want a home?"

Tail curling toward its belly, the tooka mewed at him.

That did it. Leia looked down at the tiny, soft, helpless creature in her arms and blinked back fast tears. She could do this. She could at least manage to get the kittens home before crying over them.

"There's an application?" the Chandrilan woman said. "If you'd - if you'd like to take these two, there's some paperwork. I assume you . . . have an address?"

Leia supposed it wouldn't be very nice after all to raise tookas on board a ship, no matter how famous the ship was. "Yes," she said, trying not to sniffle as she held the kitten against her belly. "We have an apartment."

"Fits in my hand," Han said, grinning as he held up the other kitten. To avoid crying again at the sight, Leia turned her attention to the datapad she was being handed.

Ten minutes later they were on their way home, Han carrying a crate of supplies and the two tooka kittens complaining loudly from an enclosed basket in Leia's arms. "They need names," she said, looking at the two bobbing faces peering at her through the weave of the basket.

"We'll think of something. Before I leave."

Leia nodded. After a second, she added, " _He_ needs a name."

"Yeah." He shifted the crate to one hand long enough to pat her shoulder. "We have longer for that. I can think about it the whole time I'm away."

"You keep your mind on what you're doing," she said severely. "He needs you to come back safe more than he needs a name."

"He kind of needs both. Or the other kids _will_ make fun of him."

"Fine. Come back or I'm naming him after Lando."

"I don't need the extra incentive, you know."

Although she'd told him to go - wanted him to go, knew he had to - on those last nights before Han left to fight a battle without her, Leia had the sick, nervous feeling that hadn't gripped her so strongly since their trip to Bespin. She sat every day and meditated as Luke was teaching her, reaching out to her instincts in the Force and ascertaining over and over again that this wasn't like when the Force had been trying to warn her that Bespin was a trap. This was just the natural fear of knowing that Han planned to leave and that he'd be in danger. 

She said goodbye to him and Chewie with only minimal tears, which she hid from any curious onlookers in the front of Han's shirt. After the _Falcon_ had taken off, after she'd told Luke she needed some time to herself, when she was back in their apartment where Han wouldn't be for weeks to come; then she folded herself over the tiny male loth-kitten that she had somehow allowed Han to name Rathtar, and let herself cry. His sister - named, obviously, Mynock - crawled curiously over Leia's foot and watched.

"He'll be back," she told them, her voice wobbly. "And the Being only knows what he'll want to name the baby. We have to think of something on our own."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to anyone who comes back for this. Work interfered with it happening any sooner, and updates will continue to be irregular, but we'll get there.


End file.
